Academic literature on the topic '190599 Visual Arts and Crafts not elsewhere classified'

This study is an investigation in and through media arts practice. It set out to develop a novel type of new media artistic praxis built upon concepts drawn from the disciplines of scientific and cultural ecology. The rationale for this research was based upon my observation as a practising new media artist that existing praxis in the new media domain appeared to operate largely without awareness of the ecological implications of those practices. The thesis begins by explaining key concepts of ecology, spanning the arts and the sciences. It then outlines the thinking of contemporary theorists who propose that the problem of ecology is a critical issue for the 21st century, suggesting that our well-documented ecological crisis is indicative of a more general crisis of human subjectivity. It then records an investigation into particular strategies for artistic praxis which might instigate an active engagement with this problem of ecology. The study employed a methodology based in action research to focus upon the development and analysis of three new artistic works, '#14', 'Public Relations' and 'transit_lounge'. These were used to explore diverse theories of ecology and to hone a series of pointers towards Ecosophical arts/new media praxis. This journey constitutes an emergent theory for new media space design. The thesis concludes with a toolkit of tactics and approaches that other arts/new media practitioners might employ to begin working on the problem of ecology.

This research investigates critical methods for approaching aesthetic design decisions in illustration. As a method of communication illustration qualifies its subjects through aesthetic choices, or modalities. The qualifying nature of these modalities can affect communication in an image and this research seeks an explicit understanding of how this communication occurs. This practice-based research project employs two aesthetic extremes, line and tone, in the creation of four historic visual narratives designed to fill visual gaps in the history of 1 Commando Fiji Guerillas. Line and tone are tendered as a means of visually negotiating the informing records of the Fiji Commando experience, records characterised by both conflict and absence. Can these disparate, conflicting, yet necessary records of experience be visually acknowledged in an illustrated expansion of the Fiji Commando's visual history? This position serves as the point of departure for research. An understanding of the communicative properties of line and tone is followed by investigation into their relationship to the propositions they represent, with initial research suggesting that modalities reflect the social contexts from which they encode. This relationship implied a means to negotiate the historic records necessary in a contemporary visual articulation of the Fiji Commando experience through the strategic use of aesthetic modalities to acknowledge the nature of informing source material. This practice-based approach to research allowed the consolidation of both the possible and the probable in the creation of a new visual, historic text, while revealing analytical approaches to aesthetic choice.

With origins in skateboard and surfing culture, snowboarding has grown to become a mainstream recreational and professional sport, officially recognized in the Olympic Games. This popularity can be attributed to several factors, including the sub-culture of rebellion and self-expression it embodies and the daring, dynamic aerial maneuvers and stunts often portrayed in the media. However, the sport also exposes participants to a well-documented injury pattern, with injuries rates typically twice as frequent as those seen in skiing. While a number of studies have shown existing snowboarding safety products reduce the risk of injury, these readily available products are not widely used among participants who view them as “uncool” and “unnecessary”. Exploring how affective features and attributes can improve the desirability of a forecast snowboarding personal protective equipment (PPE) product, this thesis proposes that a primary requirement for these products must be desirability - to make attractive, to create a positive impression, to strengthen ones identity and engender appreciation. Responding to these emotional needs, this thesis presents a proposal for a product designed to enhance user-experience, challenging the current philosophy of safety products and their ‘uncool’ perceptions.

Being storied; a lived experience of time discusses selected aspects of the research and studio practice undertaken in the course of the year 2008. Central to the process has been attending to the mundane acts of everyday life in the rural environment in which I live. It discusses actions such as walking, listening, collecting and documenting as well as experiments with a waste material, used baling plastic that is installed in various ways into the landscape. Parallel to this are investigations with sound and text, which have drawn on my varied musical background. There is an exploration of time - the idea of durée, human experience of time, quality of attention through intense focus, and memory as it accumulates over time. Art of the everyday has also been a key area of research. Life changing events have occurred during the course of the year. The death of parents has substantially influenced the work. The practice described is multi-faceted, involving the use of text, sound, photography and film.

Prior to the 1950s, visual culture within tribal environments could be separated into customary and non-customary. In the early 19th century, customary visual culture maintained visual correspondence with prior painted and carved models of the pre-contact period. In the latter part of the 19th century, non-customary painted and carved imagery inspired by European naturalism informed tribal visual culture. This accommodation of European imagery and practice was trans-cultural in its translation to tribal environments. In the 1960s, an innovative trans-customary art form evolved outside tribal environments, fusing customary visual culture and modernism. This trans-customary art form, which maintained visual empathy with customary form of the 19th century, was introduced into the tribal environment, initially, in a painted mural in 1973, and subsequently in a multimedia mural in 1975. In 1989 and 1990, this trans-customary Maori art practice informed the art of the Taharora Project at Mihikoinga marae in Ohineakai. In this Project, the 1970s transcustomary Maori art precedents were extended with non-customary form and practice. The thesis employs tataitanga kaupapa toi as a paradigm for Maori cultural relativity and relevance en-framing form, content and genealogy. Annexed to this paradigm are a range of methods: a tataitanga reo method for interpreting Maori language texts; a tataitanga korero method, conjoining a kaupapa Maori and an iconographic approach, for interpreting meaning in tribal visual culture, and a tataitanga whakairo method, incorporating stylistic analysis as formal sequence, semiology and intrinsic perception, for analysing a continuum of stylistic development from the Rawheoro School of carving to the Taharora Project. The Taharora Project constitutes the case study where tribal visual culture and contemporary art within tribal environments are contextualised in a trans-cultural continuum. The critical question that underpins this thesis is how do form, content and genealogy contribute to art that resonates with Maori? The thesis concludes that trans-cultural practice in contemporary art can resonate with Maori if the art maintains visual correspondence or visual empathy with customary tribal form. In their absence, cultural resonance can be achieved through a grounding of the content, informing the art, in a paradigm of Maori cultural relativity and relevance, a tataitanga kaupapa toi. The genealogy of the artist is a further determinant for resonance.

The focus of this thesis is an examination of domestic handicrafts and the significance of these to Australian women's lives. The topic focuses on how the making of simple and ordinary handicrafts provides women with an escape from the domestic demands of day to day life. This thesis incorporating a body of ceramic artefacts and written exegesis is the result of an exploration of comfort and safety found in handicrafts and clay. In addition, the concepts of repetition and extraordinary ordinariness have been investigated. Exploration of this topic has required an examination of handicraft techniques, prompting me to confront and consider my own domestic situation and consider my own approach to and relationship with clay. For the final series of artworks in response to the research I have drawn inspiration from historical women's handicrafts techniques and made reference to these within the ceramic artefacts presented. Research into the area of handicraft as escape has prompted exploration into works by artists not only in the field of ceramics but those working with other media and therefore enriching my response to the topic. My research has provoked me to translate and transform women's craft skills to create a framework for my own works in clay in addition to establishing a context for my work within the field of contemporary ceramics and more broadly within contemporary visual arts. Among the results of the project has been the development of a new approach to the medium of clay incorporating innovative techniques, as well as a greater conceptual framework within my own ceramics practice.

Kenneth Bayes describes two ways in which we move through space. The first as a ‘tourist’ and the second as the ‘habitué’. The tourist is an “exploratory through an unknown environment” (Porter, 1997, p. 44) - which is juxtaposed against the habitué, who is “the habitual through a known environment” (Porter, 1997, p. 44). Each concept is the other’s polar opposite. The habitué is bound by routine, while the tourist is active and engaging in their environment, discovering new possibilities and exciting alternatives. The tourist looks upon their environments with fresh eyes. They are open, receptive and able to imagine possibilities where forms in rooms bend, waver and swell. Imagining tells stories which provoke and expand our thoughts. It allows one to escape preconceptions about the nominal nature of objects and our relationship with them. This research explores these characters, the habitué and the tourist, in relation to furniture and its arrangement within the interior. It investigates how the habitué may over time become the tourist in their own familiar environment. I am the tourist within this research who activates drawing, making, writing and photography as productive processes of imagining exciting alternatives for furniture. Through my work I seek to trigger, for the habitué, their imagination by allowing them to enter into mine through photography, expanding what they originally perceived of furniture.

This research extends upon interpretations of the use of text as a visual component in contemporary studio based practices. It continues my ongoing research trajectory into the use of text in art and the development of a practice that heavily reflects, and is influenced by urban and suburban experiences.